Being a Hebrew in the Jewish State

All Israeli Jews have their IDs marked with the word "Jew". Prof. Uzi Ornan's says "Hebrew." Due to a loose bureaucracy back in 1948, Uzi Ornan succeeded in getting himself by nationality, as he interprets it, rather than religion. Makes sense. Prof Ornan is a Hebrew linguist and member of Israel's Academy for the Hebrew Language.
Following in the footsteps of author Yoram Kaniuk, Ornan wants to get the church out of the Israeli state. He wants his legal status to be defined in secular terms, not religious.

His petition was denied. Ironically, since Ornan was born in Jerusalem before the founding of the State of Israel, his right of abode in the State of Israel is granted to him only under Israel's Law of Return.

This should become part of Israel's Hasbara spiel: Israel does not discriminate against non-Jews! All indigenous peoples, Jewish or Palestinian are denied citizenship rights by virtue of having been born in Palestine!

The Haifa court ruled that Ornan is an Israeli citizen because his mother is Jewish, not because he was born in the country. So, even a Jew, who was born in Palestine can be a citizen only because he is as Jewish as an American Jew.

The Law of Return applies to Jews. A "Jew" is someone whose mother was Jewish. According to the Haifa court, the Israeli authorities must deny an individual's desire to declare his own identity. Otherwise, per the court, the non-religious, or non-identifying child of a Jewish mother in the U.S. would not be allowed to enter Israel under the Right of Return. This is much more than an issue of church and state. This is about the state imposing religious status on citizens.

This is a bizarre ruling. Seems to me that it is born of a fear that Israel will run out of Jews. In its endless battle to achieve demographic superiority, Israel needs every weapon it can use: including importing Jews from overseas. Any dilution of that reservoir is a matter of national security. So, the state must enact laws to preserve the Jewish character of the state even if the Hebrew object.

Jewish Identity and American Loyalty

This post was written by Bruce Wolman over at Mondoweiss. I am copying it here in full because I found it so thought-provoking. As a Jewish educator, this post brings home to me the challenge progressive Jews are forced to deal with: what is Jewish identity without an outside enemy, without anti-Semitism?

More importantly, Mr. Wolman's post challenges American Jews. If being Jewish means supporting the State of Israel's agenda, what happens when the Israeli agenda is at odds with American concerns, including the safety of American soldiers? This problem is as old as Zionism itself and, will undoubtedly,  continue to bedevil American Jewish Zionists.

The costs to the USA in pushing so hard to defend Israeli interests was beginning to seriously deplete our hard-power and soft-power assets (as defined by Joseph Nye). This analysis is not based on assuming Zionist control of US foreign policy. It only needs to posit that in negotiations if you want something – and the other side knows you want something – then expect to have to give up something in return. As a negotiator, if I insist on fulfillment of one of my demands, I understand that I am going to have to ease up on other demands. This is just the nature of negotiations. This dynamic is even stronger if negotiations are on-going rather than one-off.

For whatever reasons, the US has decided to make the Iranian nuclear program its number one foreign policy concern. Diplomatically maintaining that policy has its costs. The Chinese may prefer not to see Iran have nuclear weapons, but it is not a major issue for them, while access to Iranian oil is a major objective of the Chinese. The US has in place a policy to increase economic, political and military pressure on Iran to suspend its enrichment program and curtail other aspects of its nuclear program. This pressure cannot be made operational without international cooperation. The Chinese could easily undo US efforts if it wanted. What is the price that the US has paid to get Chinese acquiescence? My assertion is that part of the deal with China is that the US will not demand tougher economic concessions from China, that the US will continue to accept large deficits in its Chinese trade and maintain US openness to Chinese goods, and in return that China will let the US continue with its Mideast policies. (Frankly, I believe China must be laughing at this trade-off, as it considers the US Mideast strategy self-defeating.)

The connection with Israel is this. The US concern over Iran is as intense as it is due to Israeli policies and the pro-Israel lobby’s insistence that Israeli interests are one and the same as America’s, and should be given the same priority by the US as by Israel. If we did some reasonable polling of Americans and the US foreign policy elites, I am certain we would find that those polled would give a much higher priority to dealing with our economic relations with China and a lowering of priority to dealing with a possible Iranian nuclear weapon’s program than is now in fact the case. Why the disconnect? I would argue on account of US domestic politics. The Democratic Party is heavily dependent on Jewish funding. To what extent does not get into print, but you can be certain that the Party heads and leading politicians know. Otherwise, you would have to argue that the Parties have researched every demographic aspect of their donors except religion, especially the Jewish religion. You only have to listen to the craven speeches of Congresswoman Pelosi and Congressman Hoyer last week at AIPAC to see how servile the Democratic leadership has become to the Israeli narrative and pro-Israeli interests.

Republicans line up with Israel for slightly different reasons. Although less dependent on Jewish donors, they still receive sizable amounts. In this election cycle Sheldon Adelson has made everyone aware of that. Moreover, Republicans have tried to put a wedge between Jewish donors and the Democratic Party by arguing they are the more reliable supporters of Israel. The Republicans also have the Christian Zionists as part of their base, and in some ways the Christian Zionists are more extreme about Eretz Israel than the Israelis. Supporting Israeli expansion and unpeopling the Palestinians is throwing this part of the base some red meat. Right-wing nationalism always needs an enemy to fight, and Islamization is the current enemy. Iran-Israel is the front line for these people, whom comfortably sit well behind the lines. Finally, well-funded neo-Conservative institutions are part of the Israeli-lobby and important players in the mass media. Republicans want to keep the criticism from these circles to a minimum.

In an attempt to appease these domestic political dynamics, the Obama administration keeps spending its diplomatic capital defending Israel. While each decision by itself may have been considered a small price to pay for re-election, cumulatively, these decisions add up. Putting at risk our relationship with Turkey in order to take Israel’s side in the flotilla incident and then to continue to insist that Turkey make-up with Israel is not in America’s interests. Being only concerned whether the new ruling forces in Egypt maintain the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty (and not the part of the treaty relating to solving the Palestinian question) does not further US interests in the Arab Middle East.

There is no conspiracy. It is all out in the open for all to see. Israelis are just taking advantage of the situation with the assistance of their pro-Zionist allies and the American Jewish community. An alternative domestic political strategy was also there for all to see last week. When Israel went too far and so threatened American interests that even Obama was forced to act, the President came out on top. All he had to do was say that he was not willing to put the lives of American soldiers at risk to meet Israeli demands and it was game Obama. Of course it helped that the risk-averse Obama had a fresh polling of American opinions about war with Iran and that the US military is heavily opposed to another war in the Middle East.

A National Anthem for Two Nations

Al eyes were on the lips of the Supreme Court justice. What would he say?
He kept his lips sealed and said nothing. This set off a media firestorm  in Israel that made it to the New York Times.
Salim Joubran's silence was not on judicial matters but on a matter of national identity. Justice Joubran did not sing the national anthem along with his eight fellow justices, the Israeli President and Prime Minister.
Here's why:

As long as the Jewish spirit is yearning deep in the heart,
With eyes turned toward the East, looking toward Zion,
Then our hope - the two-thousand-year-old hope - will not be lost:
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

Not much to celebrate here for a Palestinian Christian from Haifa.

All Palestinian Israelis who achieve national and international prominence face this problem. There are periodic discussions in Israel about non-Jewish athletes and their response to Israel's national anthem at international sporting events.

BDS and the debate over a one state solution has brought greater media focus to this issue. BDS is gaining increased credibility even in the Jewish community. Today, the center-right Jewish newspaper The Forward, published a mostly favorable article on Ali Abunima and his BDS campaign.

Back to the question of a national anthem - what would the anthem of one-state Israel/Palestine be?

Uzi Arnon has come up with a proposal which you can hear on You Tube. Here is my rough translation:

A Song for the Motherland

Text: Uzi Arnon

Melody: Yaron Livneh

Let us rise, children of our native country

Every religion and ethnicity together we stand ready

O Land - native land - how beautiful you are

You, the land, are our mother, our nationality, all are equal before you.

Children of the Motherland, let us rise together to you we swear allegiance

Men and women together we are called

See the whispering yearning of peace descend upon us -

Extend a hand of respect to each other

We are all citizens – we reap the benefits and share the burden

Respect and equality for all, we hold dear in our hearts

Just and robust laws for each citizen

This is our truth, supreme over all religions!

My brothers in destiny, be ready at all times

To confront the appearance of evil and wrath

Our covenant is stronger than any threat

This is our oath of fealty to our common Motherland

Children of the Motherland, raise up your eyes

On the horizon do you see the blue-hued hills?

The sun bursting through with golden rays

To light up the sky with royal purple

We are citizens – we share in good times and in our duties

Respect and equality for all we hold dear in our hearts

Just and robust laws for each citizen

This is our truth, supreme over all religions!

The anthem has some significant issues. For instance, "motherland" is bad enough in fascist anthems. IMHO, a progressive anthem should just drop the concept.
Also, proclaiming a "truth supreme over all religions!" is bound to get any number of Jews, Christians and Muslims mad.

Monarchies don't have this problem. The people just sing an anthem in praise of the sovereign wishing him good health (the Austro-Hungarian Kaiser for example) or long life (Queen Elizabeth II). In multi-ethnic empires you can sing the same words and same melody in whatever language you please. That's the beauty of not having nationalism. The Austro-Hungarian anthem was sung in 12 languages.

But I don't see that working for Israel/Palestine. Better to have two versions of the anthem. Some general sentiments along the lines of Uzi Arnon's. Cut "the Motherland", instead each side could insert some favorite heroes and themes. Both sides will set their text to the same melody. If, on the one hand, the Jordanian anthem can use bagpipes and, on the other, the Israelis love Middle Eastern music, then there must be some middle musical ground that could work for both Jews and Palestinians.  Perhaps some Paul Ben-Haim Mitteleuropa take on a Middle Eastern maqam. The same melody for both sides will solve lots of problems because the anthem is often played as an instrumental piece.

Jewish Statement Opposing an Israeli/American Attack Against Iran

Today I had the privilege of working with my colleagues on the Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voice for Peace on a statement opposing an American or Israeli attack of Iran. This statement is addressed to President Obama who is meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu on Monday at the White House.

Jewish Statement about Attacking Iran, March 5, 2012

We, the undersigned American Jewish clergy, are deeply concerned about reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu will demand of President Obama, at their meeting at the White House today, that either the United States attack Iran, or else, Israel will.

We do not welcome the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. We call on all the military forces in the region - including Israel's - to divest themselves of their nuclear armaments and renounce any belligerent nuclear aspirations.

The State of Israel refuses to acknowledge its own nuclear arsenal or to submit to international monitoring. We believe it is hypocritical of Israel to demand of Iran what it refuses to agree to itself.

Most of the people of the State of Israel oppose Prime Minister Netanyahu's military threats against Iran. They fear the consequences of an attack on Iran. As Jewish leaders, we too believe that the path of wisdom towards achieving peace and stability in the region is through dialog and engagement and not through acts of war. We call on the United States government to safeguard the interests of the people of Israel and Iran.

Nine years after the United States launched a war against Iraq that is widely recognized as having been badly executed and unjustified, Israel would have the U.S. implicate itself in a new war in the region, this time against Iran. We believe that Jews, and other Americans, will not support more reckless adventurism in the Middle East.

In this election year, we call on President Obama not to give in to warmongering. As Jewish leaders we cannot endorse an Israeli act of war against the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Bible teaches us: "bakesh shalom v'rodfehu -  seek peace and pursue it." We urge President Obama to stand firm and to use his power as Israel’s chief supporter to draw Israel to the path of peace and justice.

Cantor Michael Davis, Evanston, IL

Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, Re’ut, Israel

Rabbi Rebecca Lillian, Malmö, Sweden

Rabbi Rachel Barenblatt, Lanesboro, MA

Rabbi Brant Rosen, Evanston, IL

Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, Philadelphia, PA

Rabbi Julie Greenberg, Philadelphia, PA

Rabbi Margaret Holub, Albion, CA

Rabbi Shai Gluskin, Philadelphia, PA

Rabbi Zev-Hayyim Feyer, Claremont, CA

Michael Ramberg, Rabbinical Student, RRC, Philadelphia, PA

Rabbi Joseph Berman, Jamaica Plain, MA

Alana Alpert, Rabbinical Student, Hebrew College, Boston, MA

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Stony Point, NY

From Jerusalem to Chicago: My Journey from Settler to Clergy-Activist

I wrote this personal statement for a Jewish Voice of Peace project. Here is my personal story:

I was raised to be a settler. My family moved to Israel during the peace negotiations with Egypt. As a high school student in Jerusalem, I regularly took off school to attend demonstrations against the peace treaty with Egypt. My yeshiva high school[i] bussed us – students and faculty – to these anti-peace rallies. Similarly, we supported our teachers when they went off to fight the PLO in Lebanon in 1982. At the Shabbat dinner table at the yeshiva, we sang an anthem celebrating the occupation in the West Bank, which we knew by its neo-Biblical name: “Judea and Samaria.” Most of my classmates went on to study in adult yeshivot [ii]on the West Bank.

We were the lucky ones. The Messiah may not yet have arrived in person, but we had the unique good fortune of living in the epoch of Atchalta d’G’eula,[iii] as foretold in the Talmud. We were partners in the Redemption of Eretz Yisrael,[iv] heralding the birth of a Messianic age.

I was a settler. I grew up on a suburb of Jerusalem that was a West Bank settlement. Later, I served as a soldier in the IDF[v], on the West Bank. As a teenager, there was no daylight between my Israeli identity and my settler ideology. We went on hikes - under armed guard - through the hills and by the villages of the West Bank. We bravely went where no Jews had settled before. The Palestinian territories were our Jewish frontier.

Settlers, so we were taught, embodied all that was good in Israel. We, the settlers, did not care about money. Unlike secular Israelis, we were not materialistic, not hedonistic. We gave our admiration and love not to the idols of Israeli and American pop culture but to the Land.

We loved the Land of Israel, or, more accurately, the part of it known as Greater Israel. Our love for Eretz Yisrael was given, not to Tel Aviv, but to Hebron; not to Haifa but to Sh’chem (Nablus); the Golan Heights, not sinful Eilat. As Jerusalemites, we turned our attention to the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. On Sukkot, we gathered there in a yeshiva, a settler outpost, on Bab el-Wad street, just a few minutes walk from the Western Wall. We heard our rabbis teach Talmudic and Kabbalistic discourses on the rebuilding of the Third Temple.

So what if settlements were illegal. Our mission as agents of the Messiah superseded the rule of law. To be a good Jew was to be an Israeli, and to be a good Israeli was to build new settlements.

Our older peers, the ones who built settlements all over the West Bank, were the spiritual heirs of the original Zionist settlers, only better. Those teenagers, who a hundred years before us, had spurned the creature comforts of Bialystock and Berlin and sailed off for Jaffa to reclaim the Land. The West Bank settlers were every bit as self-sacrificing. In addition, they were not religious rebels but yeshiva boys.

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And then, I left all that behind. I “took off my kippa”. I severed my ties to Israeli Orthodoxy and its settler ideology. I rejected the Messianic purity of thought and that cozy camaraderie of my peer group. I no longer marched through the Arab market on the eve of Yom Yerushalayim[vi] with thousands of fellow settler supporters, banging on the metal-shuttered stalls. I no longer went to the demonstrations supporting the Occupation. I did not travel to Hebron to dance the hora in a city under curfew. I gave up the dream of a suburban house with a garden in the middle of Palestine, dodging bullets and stones on the daily commute to work in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

However, even in my apartment in genteel West Jerusalem, it was impossible to escape the reality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank just a few miles down the road. In my 20s, my friends routinely, if reluctantly, served on guard duty at West Bank settlemets. As a reservist in the Israeli army, I strategized how to dodge these annual call-up orders. I wasn’t quite ready to serve time in the stockade. Fortunately, for me, the Israeli army wasn’t interested in jailing large numbers of conscientious objectors either. I regularly managed to set up alternate service at my old military base in Tel Aviv and thus avoid ever being posted to the West Bank.

In other ways too, it became increasingly clear, that the Green Line, the border between the West Bank and the State of Israel could not insulate me from Israel’s settler ideology. As a university student in Jerusalem, I watched with concern the rapid rise of the so-called “Modern Orthodox” in the military. This segment of Israeli society is almost completely pro-settler.  It became common to see a knitted kipa on the heads of young officers carrying assault guns. The Israeli army famously plays an oversized role in Israeli public life. The influx of religious officers was a coming of age for Orthodox Zionism. The emergence of the  Orthodox officer corps was the final nail. The age of Kibbutznikim and Labor Zionists is long gone.

Predictably, the rise of the pro-settler camp in the junior ranks eventually reached the senior officer corps too. Today, several generals are now Orthodox pro-settler. Other leadership positions in the State of Israel are now filled by settlers. A settler[vii] was recently appointed to serve as a justice on Israel’s Supreme Court.

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In 1992, when Yizhak Rabin returned to power, replacing Yizhak Shamir as leader of Israel, my friends and I were jubilant. Yizhak Shamir had stonewalled any attempts at reconciliation with the Palestinians. For us moderate Israelis, Rabin’s rise to power as leader of Israel was our equivalent of the toppling of the Berlin Wall. Over a period of months, new and exciting horizons of hope for peace opened up.

During this time, as a reservist in the IDF, I participated in the first military withdrawal from Gaza in May 1994. I saw Palestinian officers working with IDF officers on Israeli military bases. I saw the first joint patrol jeep of Palestinian and Israeli soldiers. The Messianic promise of the wolf and the lamb laying down together was here. Who knew, perhaps Prime Minister Rabin would indeed be the one to undo Ariel Sharon’s legacy in the West Bank?

As we now know, the idyll lasted for a just few, short years.

At that fateful peace demonstration in central Tel Aviv one Saturday night in November 1995, I was one of the thousands who heard the three gunshots that ended Rabin’s life. We ran for cover into the side streets off the main square. I didn't stop moving until I left Israel. The rise of Netanyahu sealed the deal. I left Israel and moved to the United States.

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At some point, while I was still living in Israel, I came across an American dictionary. I was flipping through the back of the book when I came upon the opening lines of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. I was then still unfamiliar with the iconic lines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

Such straightforward clarity!  Of course, I realized that the United States was not without its own problems, but, at least here was a theoretical framework that made sense. It gave me hope.

Over time, I came to understand that, what was written in opposition to the rule of King George, was also a rejection of an ethnic state. If all men are created equal, how can one justify a state that, on principle, favors one ethnic group over another. From the State of Israel’s own Declaration of Independence that declares the formation of a Jewish State, through the State’s Basic Laws (the building blocks of an Israeli Constitution) that favor Jews over non-Jews, to State institutions that limit land ownership for non-Jews, the State of Israel officially favors Jews and discriminates against non-Jews. The State of Israel was constituted as a Jewish state with limited democracy. The United States, on the other hand, gave the world the model of a democratic state. I knew which theoretical model I preferred.

For years, I placed myself in the Liberal Zionist camp. I wanted to believe, like Amos Oz and his camp, that a Jewish State was both necessary and could be fair. Today, I no longer believe either of those. I believe today that time has finally run out for the philosophy that upholds that Israel can both institutionally, legally and constitutionally favor Jews on the one hand and still deal justly with its non-Jewish, indigenous population, on the other. I also do not see how a Jewish State offers greater security for Jews, either now or in the event of some future threat.

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My Israel/Palestine activism in the States was, initially, my way of staying connected to Israel. This is an area I knew well and could contribute my expertise to the political effort. Yet, over time, as I became integrated into American life, I came to understand Israel, not only as an Israeli ex-pat, but within the context of the U.S. and American Jewish life.

I love American Jews for their proud, social consciousness: their stand for civil rights, their fight to keep church and state separate, their visceral support for immigrants, and their overall, vigorous civic engagement.

I was therefore dismayed to see all these values firmly set aside when it came to Israel: the organized Jewish community’s stand with Israel in bombing Gaza, the unquestioning support of a Jewish state with limited democracy, vilifying those who work for full democracy, including Jews and even Israelis, ostracizing those within the community who cross the approved line. Some days I feel that, since I did not grow up in the American Jewish community, I will never understand the emotional context for, what I see as, a bifurcated values system. My commitment is to work at getting closer to these Jews whom I love. I try to follow the path of listening, and not judging. Being present and not preaching. I have evidence that this approach works. The many different and conflicting ways that Jews love Israel need not be a cause for strife.  Instead, it can be a powerful way of connecting Jews to each other. I have seen Jews with opposing beliefs on Israel sit at the same table and listen to each other’s opinions. Each one felt validated in being heard.

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For myself, I feel that I am heard in the context Jewish Voice for Peace. I am proud to be a founding member of its Rabbinical Council. JVP is the place where I can speak my truth without fear. My colleagues on the Rabbinic Cabinet speak the same language I do. At times we disagree, but we share a deep connection to Israel and to our values, and the commitment to bring those two sentiments together.

There is much exciting work to do. The separation barrier between Israelis and Palestinians is emblematic of mental barriers that we each carry within us. Our leadership is needed. We need safe places for Jews to work through their concerns about Israel. There is a need and an opportunity for a new model of interfaith dialog with Christians. They, too, share our deep love for the Holy Land rooted in their own religious tradition. We have the opportunity to make meaningful connections with Christians, not based on formal politeness or supporting Israel right-or-wrong, but through acknowledging our common love for Israel/Palestine and standing in solidarity with Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

As American Jews, we need not follow Israel into its self-imposed bunker of isolation. We, American Jews and Christians, can also play a role in helping Israelis to heal. American Jews can model for Israel a better way of engaging with their neighbors and the world. We can support the brave Jewish and Palestinian activists in Israel and the Occupied territories.

Zionism set up a new paradigm which held the Land of Israel to be the center of Jewish life and the rest of the world at the periphery, known as the Diaspora. Today, the time has come to claim our place as the dynamic heart of the Jewish tradition. We are leaders in engaging with our non-Jewish neighbors and expanding the scope of Jewish life to include those who had previously been excluded. Israeli leaders, including Orthodox Jews, are coming to America to learn from us how to be good Jews.

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I support the call of Palestinian civil society for BDS. This non-violent strategy allows me to stand in solidarity with the oppressed. The debate around BDS has the potential to break through the passive support that mainstream America offers the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and the disenfranchisement of indigenous non-Jews in the State of Israel. My support of BDS is not intended to bring Israel to its knees – there is no chance that that will happen. BDS, for me, serves as a wake-up call to American Jews, to all Americans, and to the world community. Where the rest of the world goes, Israel will eventually follow.

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Last month, I was in Jerusalem for a family celebration. At his invitation, I visited with Archbishop Theodosius, the senior Palestinian cleric, in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem. Archbishop Theodosius was a gracious host. He sees Palestinian Christians as the bridge between Jews and Moslems. His vision is to draw Israeli Jews into the conversation about full democracy for Israel/Palestine. He tasked me with translating the 2009 Christian statement of unity about Palestine (Kairos) into Hebrew. I was happy to accept this project.

My activism continues to bring me to new frontiers; I am making new friends in unlikely places. Archbishop Theodosius told me that I am only the second Jew he has befriended. I was a fellow Jerusalemite for many years and yet we never met before. Until recently, neither of us had met anybody in the other’s religious group.

I continue to be an activist in order stay connected to the issues and to my own sense of what is right. Activism makes me hopeful. For me, activism means moving beyond

dissatisfaction to a place where what is wrong does not affect my spirit. My community of activists is a safe place. Activism allows me to confront the reality of Israel/Palestine without loss of spirit.

I see the old tropes of Holocaust and Israel-right-or-wrong becoming increasingly irrelevant to young Jews. Its is these Jews, in their 20s, who give me hope for the future. By staying true to their beliefs, they will increasingly make their parents and grandparents aware that Zionism is not the only way of being Jewish. I believe the Jewish community will transform and come back to its core values.

 This piece is cross-posted at  the blog of the Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian Talmud

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[i] Seminary for high school students. This is a residential program with a 12 hour day, of which some 2-3 hrs are given to general studies. The rest of the day is devoted to religious studies and practice.

[ii] Post high school rabbinical seminaries. Traditional studies combined with ideological training. Periods of yeshiva study are interspersed with military training and service. I studied in such an institution within the borders of the State of Israel.

[iii] Aramaic. “The Beginnings of the Redemption”. First appears in the Talmud (6^th century) as in Babylonia Talmud, Tractate Megilla 17b

[iv] Hebrew. “The Land of Israel”. The traditional, Jewish name for the geographic areas covered by State of Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and parts of Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.

[v] Israel Defense Forces. The Israeli armed forces.

[vi] Hebrew. “Jerusalem Day”. On the Hebrew calendar, it commemorates the anniversary of the capture of Jerusalem’s Old City on June 7, 1967. This is a minor national Israeli holiday that was embraced enthusiastically by the national-religious settler camp.

[vii] Asher Grunis

United States: No TV for Palestinians

I've gotten used to the state of affairs of the Palestinian crisis: the world is waking up to the injustice of Israel's treatment of its Palestinian population while Israel continues to indulge in blissful apathy. So, I haven't posted much recently. But this news item got to me. The US is withholding $130m in USAid money from the Palestinian Authority as punishment for September's statehood bid.

The United States Declaration of Independence inspired me to move here and become an American citizen. The succinct phrases that speak with dignity of the right to self-determination are America's gift to the world. America, through its ideals, inspires people all over the world. Americans enshrine freedom and the quest for liberty as a core value.

Except when it comes to Palestinians. The Palestinians were told by Israel, backed by the United States, that they may not take their bid for international recognition to the United Nations. When the Palestinians did so anyway, Israel and the United States decided to punish the uppity natives.

So, Russia is worthy enough to get Sesame Street but Palestinian children will have to do without. Go figure. Shouldn't USAid be promoting democratic values around the world?

Perhaps it's the Palestinians recent, impressive accomplishments in building a democratic polity that convinced Congress that they did not need the education that American and Israeli children get.  Hamas and the PA are uniting; the Palestinian people have displayed remarkable commitment to non-violence in the face of unremitting violent occupation.

And the results are showing: the Palestinian cause is gaining momentum on American campuses. Yet  the US Congress plan is to browbeat the Palestinians back into passivity. Or perhaps the US Congress prefer it the old way of Palestinian disunity, violent opposition to the military occupation and no self-determination

The Origins of Zionists vs. Palestinian

At last week's rally, I had an interesting conversation with the Palestinian intellectual, Prof. Rashid Khalidi. He has a thesis about where Zionism went wrong.

Zionist immigration from Europe to the Land of Israel is understood as distinct waves of arrivals, or aliyot. The first aliya in the early 1880s was precipitated by the reactionary and punitive policies of Russian Tsar Alexander III. According to Khalidi, the Zionists of the first aliya wished to be integrated into the multi-cultural Ottoman Empire, of which Palestine was a part. Our Eastern European forbears were famously multi-lingual.  Living in the multi-ethnic Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires was good training for life within the Ottoman Empire.

Not so, the second  - and much larger - aliya that began in the wake of the pogroms of 1905-6. These young men and women built the institutions that culminated several decades later as the State of Israel. David Green (Ben-Gurion) was just one of the leaders who emerged from the second aliya.

This group sought to impose a separate national, Jewish identity on Palestine. According to Prof. Khalidi, this was the beginning of Jewish domination at the expense of the majority, native population of Palestinians.

The relationship between mono culture, nationalism and language is of interest here. The battle for the supremacy of Modern Hebrew began, in earnest, with the second aliya. Interestingly, while the first aliya, launched an early version of spoken Hebrew (with the iconic myth of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda as the father of Modern Hebrew), their version of Hebrew was superseded by that of the second aliya. Hebrew culture in Europe had continued to develop independently of Palestine. These second aliya Zionists brought with them their own Hebrew, which, due to their numbers, overtook that of the first aliya.

There is a debate among left of center Jews about where Zionism went wrong. Liberal Zionists usually point to 1967 and the Occupation of the West Bank. Progressives, such as Martin Buber and his followers today date the souring of the Zionist project to the 1940 and Ben Gurion's so-called "statist" agenda.

But there were others such Martin Buber's disciple and Zionist executive, Hans Kohn, who saw the writing on the wall in the 1920s. They were concerned that Zionism had no plans for engaging the indigenous Palestinians in a common vision for sharing Palestine. Kohn resigned his post at the Zionist Jewish Agency in Jerusalem and moved to the United States. He said: "my children will be American." Buber disagreed, and when he fled Germany in 1938, he moved to Jerusalem. Even though he campaigned against Ben Gurion in the late 1940s, Martin Buber chose to stay and live out his days in the State of Israel.

I expect Hans Kohn would agree with Rashid Khalidi's judgement of the second aliya.

3rd Anniversary of War on Gaza

Yesterday, the last day of 2011, dozens of Palestinians along with Jews and other allies gathered in downtown Chicago to commemorate the 3rd anniversary of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in December 2008. At the end of the rally, over 300 black balloons were released. Each balloon had a card attached with a name of a child who was killed by the Israeli army,


 

It was a significant moment to publicly acknowledge the killing of innocent children (and many adults). I have participated in many interfaith and cross-cultural events in Chicago. Coming together in solidarity with Palestinians to acknowledge the death of children on the other side of the world was a moving experience. As the balloons flew up into the air, up and beyond Chicago's indifferent skyline, I felt the presence of all those children, if only for a moment.